AR 2.0 at Forrester IT Forum

04Jun08

Next week Forrester holds its annual IT Forum in Lisbon. This year it focuses on boosting innovation and driving transformation – nice terms and quite essential as firms seek to drive efficiencies in their operations.

As part of this event, the AR Council is meeting to discuss a variety of issues central to their role – one of these issues is about the of role of AR within social media. I am delighted to have been asked to share my views on this topic and take part in a panel on AR 2.0.

The fact that this topic is so prevalent is not surprising as I am often asked by my clients whether it is their responsibility to manage analyst bloggers, twitterers or those that use Wikis etc.

My view is simple: as long as the analysts that are important to my clients use social media as part of their job then so will I. It is not a case of arguing the merits of the different tools out there but more an acknowledgement that it is yet another channel that AR must use to accomplish its objectives.

On the other side, I think analysts need to get to grips with social media too. It is widely held that innovation in technology happens at the edge – and those people are blogging. It still amazes me that so few analysts blog or twitter – and what about the ethics… would it surprise you that Gartner and Forrester have made made over 400 edits between them (on subjects ranging from specific vendors to topics). Should this be allowed?

I will be discussing this at the event next week in Lisbon. Other topics that may be queried include:

Is the blogosphere the domain of AR? Why not PR?

How can AR pros efficiently stay abreast of activity in the blogosphere?

How can they effectively gauge influence/tier bloggers?

How should AR pros interact with bloggers? Are the rules the same for traditional analyst, especially when looking to object? How should one raise an objection (e.g. email, post, own blog, etc.)

What about other Web 2.0 formats (microblogging a la Twitter or discussion groups on Linkedin or Facebook)? Do these also merit attention?

What are the top two things you would tell an AR pro looking to get started incorporating blogs into their planning?

If there is anything specific you would like to answered please let me know. And of course, if you would like to meet me whilst I am at IT Forum, please get in touch.

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First of all, I wish I could be at the Forum. But in lieu of that I would like to know what the participants think of how the blogsphere will influence the influence of the leading Analyst Groups. I believe that the blogsphere and social media access will force the leading Analyst Groups to rethink their business models of charging fairly high prices for yearly subscriptions rather than a pay for service model. The yearly subscription model leaves a lot of small to medium size business out of the loop which distorts the whole picture of the IT business that the leading groups are supposed to cover. I will be blogging on this on subject also.

I would love to hear the feedback on that. I am starting an Israeli Chapter of the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) in Israel and the first meeting will be June 18th at the local Gartner Conference. I would be glad to share your insights with the group.

Hi Jonny, I think that you have a great set of questions to discuss. I certainly found the discussion and questions from the audience to be quite stimulating when I was on the panel at the US IT Forum.

You might want to look at my post “Analysts who blog versus Bloggers who analyze” (http://sagecircle.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/analysts-who-blog-versus-bloggers-who-analyze) because in retrospect I think the AR Council panel topic is too broad for the time allotted. Frankly, trying to “boil the ocean” in terms of taking on the entire blogosphere is a bit much. Perhaps you might want to try and talk the Forresterites in narrowing its scope somewhat. For instance, a focus on analyst blogs, AR blogs and the evolving use of other social media (e.g., Twitter) by analysts and AR could easily take up the entire time and provide some solid insights and recommendations for the attendees.

Jonny,
I really look forward to reading the next chapter in this topic. Those questions are indeed of importance since many vendor battle with AR – PR boundaries (who should comment on blogs if at all, etc…), anb bandwidth questions (can’t engage with all analysts, so how to prioritise and measure).